After another fitful night of sleep at the compound, we indulged in our now standard breakfast of Paraherbs, corn flakes topped with nuts and berries, and extra-crispy toast.

Our first stop for the day was to be the Istiqlal Mosque, the largest mosque in Asia and the headquarters for the entire Indonesian mosque system. The building loomed in a most majestic and brutal way.

At the door we were scanned by a metal detector and asked to remove our shoes. We were met soon after entering by a woman of ambiguous age dressed in a flowing and completely unrevealing outfit of matching brown silk garments, including an elaborate head scarf. She showed us to a room  with a large wooden desk where I signed the guest book. “You are students of Islam,” Jackson explained, and so we were.

After signing the guest book, the four of us left together, strolling barefoot on the cool marble floors. The entire mosque was well ventilated and ornate. With both gentle breeze and plenty of natural light pouring though the perforated walls of the building, it was cool and pleasant inside. As we strolled, the muezzin was warming up to sing the call to prayer. As we strolled, our guide kept a running narrative and invited questions. “This is one of the hardest passages of the Quran to sing,” Jackson translated. “Today the mosque will get about 10,000 visitors. On Indonesian Independence day, that number rises to 200,000.

The building was huge, but with 200,000 people it must be a madhouse. We strolled past a giant cart full of welded steel donation boxes, toward the ancillary praying areas. These were tiled with hundreds and hundreds of little plots cordoned off and facing Mecca, for the use of people during prayer times. We also visited a great wooden drum, a gift from the president of Indonesia, and used for certain, more conspicuous calls to prayer.  The drum is carved out of a single tree and stretched on both sides with cow hide.  Javanese script adorns its side, and it hangs in a frame covered in intricate woodworking.

On our way out of the Mosque, we were ushered into the office once again, to retrieve the shoes and to make a donation. After some inner calculus, Jackson determined the appropriate donation to be 5,000 rupiah (about 50 cents each). It seemed she was expecting more, since she had been for much of the tour explaining to us how hip her daughter was, bragging about the number of facebook and twitter relationships she held, and explaining how her daughter would enjoy socially networking with us. But upon receipt of the donation, she became silent, and merely motioned us toward the door.

On our way back to the car, we took a detour across the street to a large Catholic church which stood dwarfed by the mosque. Our time in the church was short, and much less pleasant. The large stone building full of smokey candles seemed to amplify the sticky Jakarta heat and the dimly lit place felt somehow simultaneously claustrophobic and deserted. The courtyard outside was quite nice though with a number of fountains and plenty of the lush tropical vegetation which Jakarta seems unable to pave over, try as it may.

We hopped back in Jackson’s car and proceeded to a nearby hotel and spa for a 10-dollar massage. This is likely one of the most expensive massages in the city, but well worth the investment. An hour later we walked away from the building feeling supremely relaxed and rather starving. To deal with the starving situation, we piled once again into Jackson’s car. By now it was threatening to rain, and in the time it took us to exit the lot, the threat was mad good. A hammering torrent and large raindrops drummed on the roof of our Kijang, drowning out the Indonesian pop music on the radio.

For lunch, we visited a Padang restaurant. Padang is an interesting style of food service. In lieu of the normal menu and ordering process, the entire menu is simply served to you right then and there in a delightful steaming tower of dishes. The customer is invited to eat what he or she will of those dishes and is charged only for the plates that were sampled. We sampled quite a few, and were rather surprised at the bill, which by Indonesian standards was gargantuan, and by western standards was, well, standard.

Below, a special piece of fried beef lung.

Refueled and refreshed, we headed back to the residence after a cup of coffee in a small cafe tucked away in the Benhil neighborhood.  The rain was just letting up.

In Jakarta it is a common phenomenon to find it raining in one part of the city and merely just humid in another. “It is very likely,” explained Jackson, “that it is still raining at the Padang restaurant.”

Cool, we thought, and mounted the cycles.

The wheel was short but fantastic. We went in search of the terrible traffic jam that had been promised the first day, and find it we did.

By now we were all getting very good at wheeling in Jakarta. We wove confidently through the streams of vehicles and found it very easy to communicate with fellow travelers to gain access to streams of traffic we were interested in.

As we approached the financial district the sun began to set and the sky blazed with a tremendous orange and red sunset, which reflected off the many skyscrapers which pierced the skyline. As the sunset blossomed into full effect, we found ourselves in very lightly trafficed set of roads encircling a large central stadium. We executed long slaloms through the warm air, enjoying the freedom of the open road and the glorious colors which were slowing fading into the many palms that lined the stadium road.

Feeling like men who had discovered a deck filled only with aces, we wheeled around and through the stadium, by children playing soccer, and athletes who were executing a peculiar training technique, involving climbing up the ticket booths and hanging from the walls in bizarrely splayed positions.

Jackson took bishop and brought us to a golf course which somehow had found its way into the city center. He called a waypoint, and we strolled into the clubhouse and purchased some water. We strolled the course and drank our water as the last bits of sunlight left the sky, replaced by silhouettes and the faint clapping sound of hundreds of bats in flight.

That evening we feasted with Jackson’s extended family at a fantastic Chinese seafood restaurant in a  local shopping mall. The journey to the mall would have been a 15-minute wheel, but we chose to take the car and driver, since Jackson’s sister was accompanying us. This turned out to be the wrong move, as the recent rain had induced a horrific traffic jam or simply “jam” as they refer to it in Jakarta. The journey of only a few miles took us nearly an hour, and by the time we arrived the entire family appeared to be preparing to gnaw on their own arms.

I must take a break here to comment on shopping malls in Jakarta. They play a huge role, as gathering places for the more affluent citizens, and are to be found in great abundance all over the city. Jakartian malls dwarf all but the more gargantuan American malls, and sport many floors with luxury goods, expensive restaurants, and playgrounds for children.  As air-conditioned panopticons, they provide refuge from the sweltering humidity of the city in a see-and-be-seen world of look-alike strangers.

This one we were dining in was no exception, and after dinner we took a stroll. It seemed almost incomprehensible that this level of luxury and consumerism could coexist with the boiling overcrowded streets, 10-cent meals, and poverty-stricken slums which were to be found right outside.

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Our second day in Jakarta began as the muggy heat worked its way into our luxurious room at Jackson’s home. We had disabled the AC (AsiaWheeling likes it hot) and as my sweat glands engaged, so did my mind: we were in Indonesia, hosted by the illustrious Jackson, and we were about to begin the first full day of AsiaWheeling. The immensity of what lay ahead lit up my system and Scott and I sprung from bed to indulge in a little correspondence. Word from Maui Jim had come through, and our new sunglasses were to be waiting for us in Singapore. Thank goodness. Those will come in handy.

A beautiful breakfast had been laid out for us, and we dug into a scrumptious meal of Paraherbs, Corn flakes, milk and toast.  Soon Jackson appeared as well, having awoken some time earlier and broken fast on his own. We took a moment to inspect the cycles and then we were off.

Jackson had prepared an aggressive itinerary for today’s wheel, and we were excited to begin. We mounted our Dahon Speed TRs and Jackson his Wim Cycle mountain bike and we were off. We quickly curled our way out of Jackson’s neighborhood and into the boiling throngs of Jakarta’s center.

I marveled for not the last time at what a welcome breed of chaos is to be found on these streets. It is true that the Jakarta traffic is thick, at times stiflingly so, but your fellow quanta of traffic are also quite understanding. I might even at times say curteous… but I’m prone to romanticism.

We whipped through the traffic as the sun beat down. Twice our Panama hats were whipped off in a sudden bits of steamy wind, or by the foul breath of a large city bus, burning a mixture of diesel and coconut oil. But each time we were able to recover them unharmed. As we pedaled on, we quickly became accustomed to the ways of the road, ringing our bells, ignoring lanes, and doing our best to signal our intent. Jackson was a fine bishop and took us through the financial district, north into the realm of government offices, and eventually through Chinatown to the old city.

In the old city we stopped for a refreshment at the Cafe Batavia. “Batavia” is the old Dutch name for Jakarta, and the cafe was definitely a throwback. The walls were almost completely covered with photographs of western movie and music stars from the 1940s and 50s. A jolly rendition of Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree. We sipped lemon tea and looked over the plan for the day. We had already accomplished a lot on the wheel, but there was still more to come.

We left the Cafe Batavia and took a quick stroll through the large courtyard outside. There were fellows positioned all around renting large Indonesian steel cycles. Each rental came complete with a bamboo pith helmet, which we could only assume passed for a head protection in these strange lands. They seemed to be quite popular among the local merry makers, who rented the cycles and the hats, and used them to pull long lazy figure-8’s through the open square. Across the square was a museum, and for 20 cents, we entered and perused imperial furniture and some decidedly unpleasant dungeons. This had been the old seat of power during colonial times, and has since fallen into a public disrepair. As we strolled through, we could hear an alarming popping noise from above, and at times little showers of plaster fell from the ceiling. We navigated around a number of Indonesian school groups in tapered jeans and a few more showers of crumbled plaster to get back to our cycles.

The next waypoint was the docks. Other than some outcries from the gatekeepers for “parking fees” we road encumbered into the fray. It was an old port, which was now catering almost exclusively to old wooden boats, which were being loaded via crane and human back with all manner of materials, from large rusting oil drums, to brand new motor scooters, still swaddled in plastic wrap.

As we rode, the workers waved and smiled, some tried to sell us no doubt deadly snacks and drinks, and others, worked to conduct traffic.

The deeper we got, the more we found ourselves joined by fork lifts and skid loaders, and even mopeds carrying frightening loads. But thanks to a little vigilance and some direction of traffic, we made our way out of the docks no worse for the wear.

By this time we were nigh on starving, so we retreated to a pleasant little chain restaurant which Jackson proclaimed to be his favorite chain in Jakarta. It was Indonesian Chinese food, and quite tasty.

We could not idle long, however, since we were already late for a meeting with the illustrious  Denise Hartono, accounts receivable agent for NLG. She met us at her office, and presented us with some sports drinks. We diluted them half way with water and sipped them wile perusing the company products exhibit and discussing the water pump and diesel generator business in Indonesia. Fascinating stuff.

The next waypoint was a grubby electrical components market in a part of Jakarta called Glodok. We strolled through the market, poking our head into various shops and speculating as to the purpose of this sea of strange gnarled second-hand electromechanical devices. At one point, we stopped to photograph a man soldering circuit boards, and he offered to teach us his craft. We attempted to graciously take a rain check and soon we were wheeling again.

It was beginning to get dark and look like rain, so we stopped at an Italian cafe only briefly before returning home. The cafe had been started by an Italian who married an Indonesian woman. The place was quite interesting with Indonesia-fied gelato and a fellow singing Buddy Holly covers on a fractured guitar. His voice was amazing, and we tipped him well.

We joined some of Jackson’s family for dinner, which was incredible Indonesian fare, followed by a most intense and caloric dessert.  The food is called Murtabak and we drove across the city to the purportedly finest stand producing it.  The stand was clean as a whistle (save for the absence of flooring) and had laid out all the ingredients to show their quality: Kraft cheese, huge cans of butter, Ritz brand dutch sprinkles, and cooking oil.

After retreating to a rooftop lounge and ordering beverages, we laid into the sweet and heavy murtabak like condors on carrion.  It was the kind of food I imagine ultramarathon runners or extreme long-distance cyclists require after a race.  Luckily, it was just enough to quell the final remaining pangs of hunger that had hit after dinner.  From there, some of the troops continued on into the night, but Scott and I were somewhat embarrassed to find ourselves in the clutches of some none-too-subtle jet lag, so we returned home for another very fitful night of rest.

On our ride out of Tianjin, our driver had a thing for Bon Jovi. Also, this day the smog was so thick it delayed sea traffic.